The 12 Worst Moments in Anime 2010

Today is the day that’s the furthest away from Christmas. There’s no day more perfect for talking about depressing subjects. 12 moments in anime I watched this year that caused me to rage. Scenes in anime that made me double facepalm at the time and continue to make me facepalm whenever I think about them (no really, the amount of times I buried my face in my hands while constructing this post as I remembered these dreadful scenes…). When anime drove me to brief moments of pure depression. For every great moment, there’s a terrible one. All in one post mind you. I don’t want to drag this pain out any longer than is necessary.

This post is 2000 words of pure and endless rage in which I poured my soul into and came out the other side shaking and totally spent. I put more sheer energy into this post than any before and it was all channeled into producing pure hatred. You have been warned.

12: Keima is just another boring harem lead

The World God Only Knows was hyped up before its airing. Now generally I like the hype. Yes it can come back to bite you in the ass when it’s unjustified, but the fantastic feeling when something lives up to the hype is worth sitting through the disappointments. But what a disappointment this was. It was just another shitty harem anime. The girls were more generic than the ones in the games Keima plays. The humour revolved around yelling loudly and turning chibi. But the biggest disappointment of all was Keima. All the hype suggested he was Lelouch in high school and oblivious to women. Rubbish. He blushed when confronted with women. His fancy uniform was no different to what anyone else was wearing, just leaving him as a generic loser in school uniform. Girls fall into his lap. Damnit guys, he’s just another generic harem lead. Urgh, I fucking hate this anime -_-

11: Favourite character turning into a crow

Thanks to No Anime is Dropped Forever, I had to watch quite a bit of anime I really didn’t enjoy this year. One of these was Air. The first half of the series wasn’t that bad. It was kinda dull, but at least it had a mildly interesting male lead in the true style of sarcastic KyoAni leads. He doesn’t hold a candle to Tomoya or Kyon, but he made Air fairly tolerable. Although not tolerable enough to finish the anime, as it turned out. But, spurned on by this new project of mine, I picked the anime back up again and what happens? Within the second new episode, they turn the one good character in this series into a crow. A fucking crow! What, why? Why kill the one good thing this anime had going for it? I generally disliked the last few episodes of that anime, but turning your good character into a crow annoyed me more than anything.

Ore no Imouto. My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute. Of course I expected it to be terrible. But the firsttwo episodes were good! Like, really good. Enough for me to call it the second best anime of the season, behind Jellyfish Princess. It was clever, witty and so tightly produced but, most importantly, it looked like it was deliberately pointing out how it wasn’t a siscon otaku pandering fest. But that started to change pretty darn quickly. Episode 3 sent off warning signs, but it wasn’t until this blasted scene did it finally reveal its true colours. No you idiots, you can’t pass this off as fanservice. This is what the anime wants to be, what it always wanted to be. It was the defining moment that shaped how the entire rest of the series wanted to be seen as.

8: Crappy Durarara villain

Durarara was one of the best anime of the year. It’s probably the only one from this year that really spread its influence across the various corners of anime fandom. Nothing had as big an impact as Durarara did. That’s why it’s all the more depressing when it mucks up. Which is exactly what it did in its the final arc. Why Durarara? Why did you decide to end your anime run by picking this guy as the villain? How many of you can even remember this idiots name? Think of the fantastic cast of characters you could have picked for your final villain. Even Izaya said it himself in the anime. He should have picked a better villain. Damnit Durarara, you need another season. Not just because the story is unfinished, but to wash the taste of this arc out of fandoms collective memory.

7: Silent Mobius 2

Silent Mobius 1 was far from the greatest anime movie of all time, but it was serviceable. It was about a girl who moves to the Big City but is chased by horrid, otherworldly demon things. It’s quite a good metaphor for someones fear when they move into a new city and how they don’t understand anything. It also has a seriously creepy near-tentacle rape shower scene. So yeah, pretty decent movie. Silent Mobius 2 is fucking terrible. I can’t stress how bad this movie is. A girl takes the main character home who she found collapsed on the ground. She then insists that she’s the main character’s friend for no reason whatsoever, follows her around obsessively until, when she’s attacked by monsters, the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP saves them. No really, this movie is just dreadful. Truly and utterly dreadful.

6: Makoto Shinkai

2010 was the year I was finally exposed to Satoshi Kon’s fantastic movies. It was also the year I was introduced to the movies of another heralded anime director: Makoto Shinkai. And I hated them. Lots of pictures of people standing in trains or floating in midair or walking in snow while the entire story is told through monologues. ‘Show, not tell’ you stupid director! Just a parade of pretty pictures with some uninteresting love stories involving 2 people with no personality whatsoever. Jesus Christ, I hate his movies. Hate, hate, hate them. Worse, I even saw 5cm per Second in the bloody cinema because it was screening at the same venue as Summer Wars and EVA 2.0. I was laughing at how bored I was. The final scene was a boring song and more pretty scenes of sakura petals floating. Why the hell do people like this guy?

5: Angel Beats makes no sense

I liked Angel Beats. Still do, as a matter of fact, even if it has become an unpopular viewpoint to have. It was a hell of a lot of fun, watching TK boogying off in the background as it mocked itself and the characters. One of the things I did like to do was throw out wild theories as to what was going on. They were in purgatory. They were in a game, all on life machines as they simulated living. It was as much fun theorising what was going on as what was actually going on. But then came the final episodes and it became clear Angel Beats was an utter mess. I realised that it hadn’t a clue what it was doing and was constructing a plot not knowing what it really meant. Please don’t suggest more episodes would have made it work, nor that it needed a better director or anything. The very structure of this series made no bloody sense. A guy sitting in a room with a bunch of computers, Yuri shooting them down to ‘win’, NPC’s turning into blobby monsters NO STOP ANGEL BEATS! STOP STOP STOP BEING SO FUCKING STUPID!!! I preferred it when I could kid myself you knew what you were doing =(

4: Welcome to my Nightmare

I’m going to have to hold back a bit on this point because this deserves a post of its own. I simply can’t explain why I had such a negative reaction to this anime in a single paragraph. To put it as simply as I can, it was Lucky Star all over again, except better. As in, it was better at causing me pain. Better at thrusting me into my nightmare. A nightmare where nothing happens, nothing happened and nothing ever will happen.

3: Magical Flying Panther

Occult Academy didn’t jump the shark in episode 12. It jumped on a Magical Flying Panther and flew far over the sharks head and off over the horizon, never to be seen again. Apart from me, who had to watch that stupid episode. By god this episode was beyond stupid. I’m finding it difficult to write about this episode in general because I keep remembering each stupid detail of the episode. It’s hard to type when your palms are glued to your face. The Magical Flying Panther takes the plaudits though. The bodyguard who never talked was actually a Magical Flying Panther all this time (not one clue given to us btw) who took care of Maya and then died tragically in a highly touching scene, with Maya apparently being distraught by this beast she met barely 5 minutes ago josdkmdcsmjnsd ARGH THIS EPISODE ARGH SO STUPID ARGH!!!

2: Princess Tutu never got better

No anime is dropped forever. When I use the term ‘dropped’ that does not mean that’s the last I’ll see of that anime in my life. Drop­ping a show means that I don’t have the enthu­si­asm to watch this show cur­rently and at a later date I’ll return to that anime. One of these anime was Princess Tutu. I was assured that IT GETS BETTER I SWEAR!!! It’s the hope that killed me. The hope I had sitting through the entire series that something would change. That it would get better. But deep down I knew. Tutu would never get better. It was going to be like this throughout the entire series. I would never like Princess Tutu. Every other moment of this list makes me rage. Tutu doesn’t. Tutu was soul-crushing.

1: Var Var Var

But nothing I watched this year beats Hellsing Ultimate episode 4. I loved the original Hellsing. Sure, the plot was a mess, but it was the style in which it was done that was the important part. But people assured me that Hellsing Ultimate was a bazillion times better, putting the original to shame. First two episodes of Ultimate were the same ground covered by the original Hellsing series, much like Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood. Hence they were a bit rushed as it strived to reach the new material. This new Hellsing, this Ultimate Hellsing, was endless sadism and overkill. This is what people were calling out for? To watch Alucard maim people for half an hour at a time and nothing else? That’s all episode 3 and 4 boiled down to. This doesn’t even have a purpose anymore. This has gone beyond even self-parody and simply looks stupid.

Then came the speech. I mean, I get that Hellsing is trying to convey that these people love violence for the sake of violence. But it had thus far managed to do was overkill depicting overkill, a highly difficult task that Ultimate managed phenomenally well. But that speech went on and on and on and on and fucking on and on. Even the dub, which was part of what made me love the original Hellsing, this time made the silly German accent of the speech even more painful to sit through. I like var. Var Var Var. Do you know what I like? Var! It was that for 20 solid minutes. 20 minutes of a speech about how much he liked war. There was nothing more to it. I was a wreck after this. This is Hellsing Ultimate? This is what everyone was crying out for? Why? Why? Why why why why why why why why why *curls into fetal position* why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why *sobs uncontrollably* why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why…

65 Comments

I watched 5cm at an anime con a few years back. I was bored by it. Wasn’t terrible, but it was a whole lot of nothing. Then the final scene came around and I was like “Oh, hey, maybe all of this was build-up to something actually happening now that they’re adults. Maybe they meet up and look back at their childhoods and laugh. That might be interesting or someth… WHAT? IT’S OVER? THAT’S IT? THIS SUCKS!”

I kinda get what they were going for, but it just went on for WAAAAAAAAY too long to absolutely stupid degrees. The show still had some really great writing, but the overkill depicting overkill was too painful to watch.

@Samshel The dub is the best part about Hellsing! Seriously if you’re ever going to watch a dub, it should be Hellsing

How should I say this … err, I don’t realy get the point of mentioning the worst anime moments. If it’s something I don’t like to mention and remember I just don’t mention it, why going out of you way to put so much effort on something you don’t like?
Anyways, you may had your reasons, but I think you should use your time making posts about for example some very exceptionaly awesome anime fight scenes or the best of the best of puns in anime. I think people would be tempted to read those kind of posts, when you consider the fact that you can’t find topics like that described and discussed by experienced people (usualy it’s done by a bunch of bratty people who don’t want to accept any other opinions).
Well, that’s my view to blogging, it’s all about interesting and attractive posts, pretty much the same like choosing books. I don’t mean to act cocky and tell you what to write, you’re free to choose what you want to write, this place is your turf not mine.

But Scamp is his most amusing when suffering! And this is 12 moments of when he suffered the most.

I’ll be interested in what Scamp has to say in reply, but this also caught my attention and got me thinking. To me, there’s something Scamp once said…to him anime where people are insufferably nice to each other is boring. In my opinion, blogging which is only about nice things is boring. I love seeing people not only talk about the high points, but the low points. It’s fun, it’s amusing, and it spices things. Also, I get an idea of anime to avoid.

I did say that it was my view, I didn’t expect everyone to just agree with it. I only wanted to say that Scamp could have written posts about much more interesting topics before writing about the worst moments.

Btw if you want to get an idea on which anime to avoid, I don’t agree on listening to other peoples opinions. Cause every persons taste differs. On that note, I think watching it and deciding wether you like it or not is up to your own judgement and will.
Also you may consider doing it like me: I only look if there are good points in reviews and act according to those posts. If I still dont like it after all, I just don’t watch it. But this way I got to watch a lot of quality anime. This is also just my opinion, everyone is free to disagree and/or correct me.
*Realizes this kind of topic is better suited for a forum and stops writing any more.*

I do admit that using other people’s recommendations isn’t always trustworthy. Once you get to know a person’s taste though, it gets easier to feel if you’ll agree or disagree with their opinions on shows.

I do get it, mentioning about things that are bad, cause it’s needed. But the good has more priority I think. It’s not like I’m a super optimist, nobody is or can be. Being overly optimistic has it’s own bad points. Yet, it still doesn’t mean being a pesimist is the good way of doing things.

And I don’t know which national news you’re talking about, but if I keep seeing headlines about emo-stuff I, like most other ppl, get tempted to tag that news station with things like: “Depressing”, “Bad”, “Crap”, …
There realy are news providers like that, they can sometimes even come over realy creep to me.

I strongly disagree with the idea of *just* writing about good stuff, or the opposite way around and just writing about the bad. It’s essential for providing a balanced opinion. Without writing about the bad, the good have nothing to comparison with and visa versa. If a news site just reported the good, it would be a shitty news site that was incapable of providing a balanced view.

I wrote 12 days about the great moments. This is the reverse side of things.

^_^ Happy to hear the reason I wished to. Then this can still pass for me. Sorry if I’ve been an *ss. Lately ppl only come to me with accusions and some realy bad rumors of others (since I’m in charge of some student house) so I wrote something on a rush there.
*Promises to keep his own problems out of common sense from now on*

The crow twist in and of itself was quite arousing. I was bored after it, but I was bored before it too. It was a boring show in general, except for that flashback arc in the middle, which relied on “stuff happening” instead of “slice of life”.

When it comes to My Little Sister–all I know is I want the scene where she’s essentially masturbating at the top of her lungs, her brother tells her to shut up, and she thinks he’s a perv PURGED FROM MY MIND FOREVER.

Since my favorite part of Angel Beats was the characters and their relationships, while it was disappointing that it didn’t make sense, I still love the series despite that. If I wanted more episodes, it’d be to flesh out more characters.

And yeah. Repeat. I love Princess Tutu. I still feel bad that for you watching the whole things. It’s just not a you thing.

I never thought much of the relationships because the characters were so nonsensical. I was more interested in the characters relationships with themselves. What drove Yuri, Kanade etc. Which we got resolutions to but were mostly pretty damn stupid. But eh, it was fun

Spot on with most of these, especially being trolled by Ore no Imouto and the crappy final Durarara ark.

I personally quite liked Makoto Shinkai’s films though. Ok, they’re ridiculousy overhyped but I never felt they were that bad. I guess static scenes and monologues don’t really bother me that much.

Also, regarding Occult Accademy, I bet you’re mainly pissed that people tended to love that stupid Battle Cat! XD. I seriously don’t get how you didn’t feel the show was completely taking the piss the entire time. The panther was just the icing on the (particularly dumb) cake!

Oh, and currently half way through Air, so I guess the end’s been somewhat ruined for me (I only read the title). Ah well, it’s not like I’m really enjoying it so far…

I have to say that anything with static scenes and monologue should NOT be called a film!! It’s just not worth watching! May as well buy a picture book and a CD and listen whilst flicking through the pages!
Loved the post and agreed even with of it ;)
Always a good chuckle reading someone raging about something :D
Or maybe thats just me? lol

Mmmm Bakemonogatari I watched it once it was finished so I didn’t have to suffer from the waiting.

Durarara became kids playing adults in the end, so it lost my respect.

Occult academy was already getting boring since episode 6 or so, and after that, watching how the series changed out of nowhere left me watching it just to be able to say how horrible the end of the series was.

About Hellsing, it’s funny how much you hate what it has become, looks like the people (like me) who like this are into watching an anime about pure violence, nothing more, cuz believe me, it doesn’t go anywhere else.

And it’s the pure violence that I don’t like about Hellsing. It used to have style. Ultimate is just blood and gore and overkill. Good to know it doesn’t go anywhere. Now I don’t have to watch it any further

Most of these are things I haven’t gotten around to watching yet, but I can say

1) I agree/disagree with the Air thing. I loved the series to death and it made me cry like a baby a few times, but what they did to Yukito…yeah. That was ridiculous.

and

2) I agree wholeheartedly with DRRR!!. The ending was seriously one of the worst I’ve seen, much as I loved the rest of the series, and why pick that guy, of all people, to be the villain? (You’re right: I don’t remember his name.)

Least favorite anime of 2010 that you finished or least favorite anime of 2010 in general because I’m not sure I can see how it is worse than say…Ookami Kakushi, Omamori Himari, Seitokai yakuindomo, etc etc.

Nope, genuine least favourite. Those 3 you mentioned I simply had no response to. They were there. They weren’t any good. End of. Where as I reacted extremely negatively to TWGOK. The only other anime that contends for ‘worst of the year’ would be Vampire Bund

I don’t even know why I even watched Oreimo after the first two episodes. At first I thought it’d be good, then I looked up the novels and saw it turned into a bunch of incest crap. I hated every episode after the “accident” the picture in your post shows.
Everyone has opinions, I agree with you on Oreimo but I disagree with you on Hidamari Sketch. I loved it. I like sitting back and watching a slightly idiotic girl living her life day by day with a few friends and enjoying every minute of it.
It’s something I can never experience.
I’ve retained most of the knowledge I gained at school and was born a man.

Regarding TWGOK. There are two kinds of hype. Hype based on nothing but trailers, rumors and well known wrtiters/studios and Hype based on the original Material. The first kind is hit and miss, but the second only works if the strong points of the source were recognized and stay the same in the adaption. Keima is a bit different in the Anime than in the Manga. On the first glance the anime is quite faithful, (at last in the episodes I saw) but they overstated some things like his blushes and understated his hmm “aloofness”. He just feels less scheming and is much more easily flustered.Combined with the seiyuu…
In the anime when he says he doesn’t care about the 3D world, it’s not really believable. Honestly Anime Keima ia a bit pathetic.
And I think the beginning is the weakest part of TWGOK.
But that aside I wouldn’t call the beginning an Harem since most girls don’t play a big role after their story is over. I would describe it as “Girl of the Week”. (Maybe you could call it an harem once he has Girls interested in him who won’t lose their memories, but that is after the first anime season.)

Hmm i forgot what I wanted to say. Maybe it was: Hype for an adaption is mainly hype for the original and an bad adaption shouldn’t be used to judge the original. After all nobody would watch this http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077869/ and then say that LOTR sucks.
(Note: I won’t recommend reading the manga since they are similar enough that hating the anime probably means not liking the manga. But I think that manga Keima fits the discription better than anime Keima.)

And I probably shouldn’t call it an bad adaption since the things I dislike about the anime are things other people like, to quote a post from randomc.net
“Compared to the early chapters of the manga I skimmed, one change in this adaptation that I particularly liked was less focus on Keima’s systematic approach on each of the targets. My early impressions of it was that it was a bit of a double-edged sword, because it really stressed how his eroge principles are being adapted into his real world methodology, yet gave him a very haughty air of arrogance at the same time. The latter actually made Keima somewhat hard to like, which I didn’t any sort of problem with in the anime where his dumber side shows up more frequently.”

There’s more to the anime I hate than just Keima, but he’s obviously my least favourite part. What makes it all the more frustrating is that I can see how it could be great but it keeps taking the direction of generic sucktitude. Just like you said, the manga has a far more interesting version of Keima and it’s as if the anime wanted to make him more likeable or relatable, and if you’ve read my blog for long enough you’ll know how much I prefer an original prick than some generic nice everyday guy.

The problems run a lot deeper than just Keima though, so I’m still not that interested in reading the manga. I think I’d prefer to pick up a volume of Kuragehime first

While I had a difficult remembering the stuff I loathed, you seemed to have engraved it into your very soul.

I disagree with the comment on Keima being a generic lead. And I could’ve done without the Air spoiler… I KNOW! It’s been out forever, but I can still bitch a little.

Other than that I can pretty much agree with your thoughts on the stuff we’ve both watched. Angel Beats never did sit with me, especially near the end. Durarara!! did have somewhat weak and annoying villain come the end. And while I’ve yet 59 watch 5cm per Second, I found Makoto Shinkai’s previous work boring as SH*t. And I think the world knows my thoughts on OreImo now. I had a RAEG post for that last damn episode.

And finally, you’re making me scared to jump into Princess Tutu. I got a lot of mahou shoji to watch next year.

…sorry about the Air spoiler. I was so busy raging that I hadn’t stopped to consider there would be spoilers in this post. In my defence, it’s not that big of a spoiler and the actual plot is very loosely connected to that scene.

Don’t worry about Tutu. I’m the only person who hates that anime. No really, the absolute only person

Fully agree on Occult Academy and Angel Beats
Sora Woto also another
all anime that appear will be very good,
but just missing something

– Flying Panther and Magical Girls come out nowhere
– blobby monster NPC
– ghost that appear on one episode and never seen again
– headless monster skeleton
its one thing if Panty-Stocking pull something out of nowhere,
another if serious anime just doing the same

lol @ air spoiler. i always planned to watch that anime for shallow reasons (same with 5cm), but my sister already told me the story was crap anyways. onto watching pretty pictures~

im always going to be dismayed by the amount of people you’re going to turn away from princess tutu, but meh. it’s an anime that requires immunity to cuteness overload, tolerance to the mahou shoujo genre and attention to literary detailing.

I disagree on some of your points, but boy how I laughed reading this. Rage posts are always the best.

I enjoyed Occult Academy from beginning to end, but from the very first episode I understood it would be a self-mocking fest, so the flying panther and his dramatic death wans’t really surprising… more like the icing on a cake of lulz (the “my spoon is the spoon that will pierce the UFOs!!!11!!” moment as the cherry on top).

Princess Tutu, yeah it’s always the same and you can say whatever you want, fact is when the music kicks off in the climatic scene of every episode I forget everything and start having eargasms.

You should read some reviews on MAL about 5 cm. At first, I didn’t like it too much but after people pointing out the wonders of the movies, I was finally able to see why that movie was masterpiece worthy (imo).

I have to say, I was a bit appalled at what you said about Angel Beats. To me it makes complete sense. (But then again, Ghost in the Shell makes complete sense to me.) I believe that Angel Beats is one of the greatest anime shows I have ever seen.

2 Trackbacks

[…] not allow for anything beyond a handful of templates. I would love to do a top ten post and a bottom twelve post, but this year’s anime just sucked. I did not complete enough shows to even fill out a […]

Search

PODCAST

New Podcast next Tuesday, December 6, on Grimgar, Mob Psycho, Schwarzesmarken, and more! The more being mostly bickering

Categories

Categories

Anime

Latest MAL Articles

How To Be a Better Anime Reviewer
--------------
The Most Promising Premieres of the Spring 2016 Anime Season
--------------
How to Cope With Your Favourite Manga Being Made Into a CG Anime
--------------
Writer's Corner: New FLCL Seasons?
--------------
Hit Anime Studios and Their Biggest Disappointments
-----------
The Best of Weird Anime: 12 Oddly Entertaining Anime Comedies
--------------
Akira and its incredible visual language: SOL, motorbikes and more!
--------------
The 4 Most Promising Premieres of the Winter 2016 Anime Season
--------------